Connecting Classrooms from Widnes to Wiri!

Pupils at Cronton CE School, Widnes, have been supporters great of ACE since the charity’s very early days raising hundreds of pounds for Arise School. In 2017, the Headteacher visited Arise, followed in early 2020 by two members of staff who spent time at the school as part of the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms Programme.

Since then, the completion of the new Computer Room at Arise and installation of computers and Wifi has enabled the classrooms in Wiri and Widnes to be connected in a very different way giving pupils in both schools a very different perspective and insight into the lives of their fellow pupils 5,000 miles away.

The experience is described below by two of Cronton’s Year 6 Pupils:

“Last week, we had the pleasure of taking part in an amazing Zoom meeting with the children at the Arise School in Tanzania. We were first introduced to Frank, who is the Head of their school and Mrs Thomson (our head) also spoke to them.

We had the privilege to have an insight into their culture and routine of their school day. Each class took it in turn to answer and ask a question that the schools wanted to learn about each other. 

We started each of our questions by saying “jambo” followed by our names and year group. We were fascinated by the fact that they had school pets such as rabbits, cows and goats. They looked after them in school. We shared that we sometimes have a pet at home such as one or two rabbits but not hundreds.

They told us all about their favourite school subjects which are maths, science and English and we shared ours. We were overwhelmed by their excellent English speaking skills as they were very fluent.

We were very proud to be able to discuss together different aspects of our school and learn about theirs. They sang their school song to us and it was very evident that they have so much love and pride for their school. They showed so much appreciation and it was very moving to listen to them.

Thanks to technology we will be able to see them more often. We look forward to talking to them again soon.”

Once again this year, Cronton pupils are using their Harvest Festival to raise money for Arise to purchase seeds with which to grow staple foods used in the school kitchen, such as maize and soya beans, enabling Arise to become as self sufficient as possible. 

As always, it was a pleasure to be able to join them for their Harvest service.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank the children, their families and all the staff for their amazing, ongoing support of ACE and Arise School.